toppatha muffin

i was watching sea-angel eat a muffin this morning, it was wrapped in a tall sheaf of paper and was presented as one cone like shape. the comment was that the muffin was strange, the fact that it was pink was enough for me to know that, but it was the taste and shape that caused the comment. it made me think of the top-of-the-muffin episode from sienfeld, part of which was the hint that taking the top of the muffin, the part most agree is the best, and leaving the bottom is a sign of upper-class greed and veblenish conspicuous consumption.

i have recently made a change in my morning habits. i have stopped stopping for a pancake and a series of chawan kecil and have replaced that with a faster stop for bungkhus caffeine in the malaysianized-seattle style. along with my americano i have found a banana chocolate chip muffin is the perferred source for morning calories and taste. but i have also found that much like the second round of espresso at the bar, the bottom of the muffin is just too much.

i love this muffin, it's better than the muffins starbucks has in the US. those are overly sweet or sadly low in fat and taste. starbucks here is also sadly halal. this is strange to me given the clientele in my sbux who are almost exclusively chinese and expat. the store i am going to is one of the first sbux in the country and has a small but loyal following. i have tried to argue the logic of catering to the market and providing something in some locations that will make the customers you have happy, while not impacting those you don't have. maybe i need to do some market surveys to prove the point, someone needs to lead this charge.

the muffins are good, but just too much. i don't want them smaller, but i have not figured out what do to with the bottoms on the days that enjoyment is second to calorie control. i was reviewing a document with someone, and offered the bottom of the muffin. as a gentlemen, i could have offered the top, but i did not expect acceptance of the offer, and the top is honestly why i purchased the muffin. there was acceptance, with a questioned look of "just the bottom?" she then proceeded to finish the bottom with a gusto and clear appreciation for the sweetness.

so this is the question i have been going over in my head? is it better to offer to share the bottom of the muffin or to suppress the pains and keep the bag closed until you are past the difficult point of sharing what might not be seen as a genuine offer. my grand mother would have said that i should have offered to top of the muffin and eaten the bottom. i could have, but the thought of passing on the top and taking the bottom would be all the more painful if the top was then brushed off. offering to share comes with the triple risk of acceptance, displeasure or rejection. we are taught that acceptance of an offer is a good thing, but when the top of the muffin is involved, do you really think that is the case?

the odd taste and shape of the pink muffin is clearly that there is no depth of muffin culture in the country. a few malay-ified chains are bringing muffins in, but the roots of this penetration are not deep enough for people to know the difference between good and bad. the choke hold of paper wrapper had done the ultimate harm of making the entire muffin into the less prised "bottom-of-the-muffin". the bakery has come up with a way to counter the culture of gastronomic greed that comes from focusing on tops which have naturally exploded out of the pan and cooked with wider exposure to the ovens heat. these higher demands produce the better quality of the exceptional tops.

the cramped version we saw was sadly malaysian. kept encased in paper, hidden from the heat, not allowed to expand and grow beyond the restrictive wrapper. no one in an open and honest environment would actually want a bottom only of the muffin, and here we have the clear example where rather than having the exceptional allowed to show itself, all are being kept in the lowest common denominator restricted space.

if you won't help me get starbucks to carry a breakfast sandwich not built on chicken hotdogs, please help me with this. let people know that malaysians will not except bottom of the muffins only. help create a culture where its acceptable to have tops and bottoms.

if you help, i will listen to my nana and be more open with my muffin. i won't just offer the bottom, it will be the fair (or at least game theory based) "i split, you pick", or even the other way around. team work is needed when dividing the top of the muffin.